Julia Cameron - Blessings: Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life

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Table of Contents

ALSO BY JULIA CAMERON

nonfiction
The Artists Way
The Artists Way Morning Pages Journal
The Artists Date Book
(Illustrated by Elizabeth Libby Cameron)
The Vein of Gold
The Right to Write
God is No Laughing Matter
Supplies
(Illustrated by Elizabeth Libby Cameron)
God is Dog Spelled Backwards
Heart Steps
Transitions
The Artists Way at Work
(with Mark Bryan and Catherine Allen)
Money Drunk, Money Sober
(with Mark Bryan)

fiction
The Dark Room
Popcorn: Hollywood Stories
plays
Public Lives
The Animal in the Trees
Four Roses
Love in the DMZ
Avalon (a musical)
The Medium at Large (a musical)

poetry
Prayers for the Little Ones
Prayers for the Nature Spirits
The Quiet Animal
This Earth (also an album with Tim Wheater)

feature film
Gods Will

jeremy p. tarcher/putnam
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

For those
who are
our companions

INTRODUCTION

Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless into fruitful. That key is Blessing.

My fathers house has many mansions, we are told. By counting our blessings, we name ourselves accurately as children of the universe, the richly dowried children of God, or, if you prefer, of good. Focused on our good, focused on our abundance, we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?

In every event, in every circumstance, we have a choice of perspective. Faced with difficulty, we can choose between disappointment and curiosity as our mind-set. The choice is ours. Will we focus on what we see as lacking or will we look for the new good that is emerging? In every moment, however perilous or sorrowful it may feel, there is the seed of our greater happiness, greater expansion, and greater abundance.

It is easy to bless events that coincide with our perceived good. When things are going our way, it is easy to experience faith and gratitude. To bless what might be called contrary circumstances requires more faith. Things do not seem to be going our way. In fact, the flow of events may actually run counter to our desires. In all times of such apparent difficulty, it is crucial to bless the flow of events as right and appropriate despite our reservations. The delays, difficulties, and disruptions we experience can in this way enlarge and enrich us. In short, we bless not only the road but the bumps on the road. They are all part of the higher journey.

It is easy, too, to bless people who are sunny and harmonious. It is easy to perceive such personalities as blessings on our path. When people are stormy and temperamental, when people are withholding, mean-spirited, greedy, or judgmental, it is more difficult to bless them, more difficult to perceive their positive contribution to our path. Faced with such unhappy individuals, blessing allows us to lessen their negative impact, to remember that they hold no real power over us. Blessing reminds us that our dignity comes from a divine source. That source is the wellspring of our self-valuing.

The key to practicing blessings is the willingness to accept the full value of each moment. As we are willing to allow each difficult moment to soften and transform into its inner potential, our hearts become hopeful, clear, brave. As we extend the tendrils of our faith above and through the walls of our resistance, our lives become green, verdant, affirming. We are the wild rose basking in the sun. As we cling to our conscious optimism, finding footholds of faith despite opposition, our lives become rooted in the soil of grace. We are nurtured, prospered, and blessed.

The act of blessing is a step into faith. Rather than stand blocked or stymied by circumstances that appear adversarial, we step forward, claiming the safety of our path, the firmness of the soil of God. We affirm, This is to my benefit. This circumstance blesses my life; I am grateful to this difficult situation for the many gifts it carries. I accept my blessings as they unfold within me.

Counting every blessing is a small step in the direction of our dreams. We gradually perceive our lives on a safe and protected path. Every time we recognize a blessing, it increases our capacity to receive a blessing. As we expand our consciousness in gratitude, we become larger vessels for good. We can consciously and creatively choose to count and encounter our good. We can consciously and creatively choose to expand.

This is easier than it may soundeasier even in the face of very real and very human difficulties.

Blessing a difficulty is not simply accepting it. It is looking at it with new eyes, considering it from a higher, more open-minded perspective. To bless a situation is not to deny its sorrowful or challenging reality. To bless a situation is to claim its inner, hidden reality, a higher, finer working-out of good for all concerned.

To bless a difficult situation, we must soften our hearts to it. When we are in the pain of a difficult realization, we tend instead to wince and steel our hearts against acceptance. We feel the prodding of a pointed awareness and we recoil, fearing it is the point of a lance that will pierce us through.

Blessing is the scalpel of spiritual healing. It removes our poisoned attitudes of fear and constriction, causing the infection of self-importance to flow away, leaving us surrendered and open to the healing action of spirit, the cleansing power of grace. As we surrender resistance, we open our hearts. Freed to love again, they become full, expansive, and wise. We are no longer victimized by resentment and anger. A higher hand is at work.

I take a daily walk with my dogs through a mesa of sagebrush near my house. It was on one of those walks that the idea for this book came to me. It came in the form of what I call my Marching Orders, what others might call the still, small voice. One moment I was walking through the sage, breathing in its sweet, heavy scent and enjoying the still-snowcapped mountains that ring Taos valley. The next moment I was listening to a startling new direction for my work: I was to write a book of lessons.Those lessons would concern an attitude of gratitude, of thankfulness for gifts received.

By now I am used to receiving such creative directives. My walks, in fact, are intended to invite them, but this one surprised me. I already had my writing plans for the next year. Just when did the Guidance think this book would get written and what made it think that I could write it? No sooner had these doubts surfaced than the firm inner voice persisted, This is what you are to do now, next.

I went home and called my editor.

I know we think we know what I am writing, I began. But evidently there is something else that I am supposed to do first.

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